Privacy Policy

This page has two halves. The first is the ordinary one: what a visit to The Care We Need involves and what happens to it. The second is the half that actually matters on a site like this, and it is about somebody who is not reading this page.

Half one: what we hold

Reading here is meant to be quiet and low-data. In practice three things exist.

1. Whatever you choose to send. If you write to [email protected] or through Contact, the message arrives with your name, your email address and whatever you put in it. Nothing more is collected, and there is no form on this site that asks you for anything.
2. Routine delivery data. To serve pages, the hosting and content delivery network handle ordinary technical details such as your IP address and browser type. This is how any website works and it is not used to build a picture of you.
3. Grouped, anonymous figures. Counts of which pages are read, so it is possible to tell what is helping. No profile, no identification, no following anyone from site to site.

What is done with it: keeping the site running, seeing which pages help, and replying to you. Nothing is sold. Nothing is used for advertising, because there is no advertising here. No information is passed to anyone other than the hosting and delivery providers that make the site appear, except where the law requires it. Cookies are kept to a minimum and you can block or clear them without breaking anything you came here to read.

Messages are kept only as long as it takes to deal with them and any sensible follow up, then deleted. Depending on where you live you may be able to ask for a copy of what is held, have it corrected or deleted, or object to a particular use. Ask through Contact. This site is for adults and is not aimed at children. Reasonable technical steps are taken to protect the little that is held, though no transmission over the internet is ever completely secure.

Half two: what we never want, and why

Everything above is about your data. The genuine privacy problem on a carers’ site is different: most of the sensitive information a carer might send belongs to somebody else, and that person never agreed to it being sent.

They are ill, they may be frightened, they may not have the capacity to consent, and they are very unlikely to know that their diagnosis has just been typed into an email to a website. Their privacy is not yours to waive on their behalf, even when you are the person doing everything else on their behalf, and even when you hold legal authority over their affairs. Authority to make decisions is not the same as permission to discuss.

So please do not send any of the following, about the person you look after or about anyone else in the household:

• Their diagnosis, prognosis or medical history in any identifying detail.
• Their medication list, or a photograph of their tablets, boxes or dosette box.
• Their discharge letter, clinic letter, test results or scan report.
• Their care plan, needs assessment, or continuing-healthcare or funding decision letter.
• Attorney or guardianship documents, or a capacity assessment.
• Their bank details, care-fee statements, benefit letters or means-test paperwork.
• Photographs of them, particularly where they may not have the capacity to agree to a photograph being shared, and photographs of wounds, skin or injuries.
• Their home address, door codes or key-safe code. People write these in without thinking, usually in the middle of explaining a care visit, and it is the single most dangerous thing to send about a person living alone.
• Their name. “My mother” and “my husband” carry everything needed to answer a question. A name adds nothing and takes something away from them.

If any of it arrives anyway, it is deleted rather than filed, and you will be told it has been. Nothing sent to this site is ever published, quoted or passed on, and no message is ever answered in a way that repeats somebody’s clinical or financial detail back.

Replies, and the shared inbox problem

Replies go to the address the message came from. That sounds obvious until you remember how many carers write from a household email account, a shared tablet, or an address a partner, a sibling or the person being cared for can also open. A reply that quotes back “you said your mother’s dementia diagnosis” can land in front of the wrong person, in the wrong week.

So replies here stay deliberately non-specific. They point at a page, name a source, or answer the general question, and they do not restate personal detail. If you need a reply that goes only to you, write from an address only you can read and say so in the message.

Changes

This page is revised as the site develops, and the date at the top shows the current version. If anything here is unclear, or if you want something you have sent removed, ask through Contact.